Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (9 page)

“Oxford Cheese Ode”
The ancient poets ne’er did dream That Canada was land of cream They ne’er imagined it could flow In this cold land of ice and snow, Where everything did solid freeze, They ne’er hoped or looked for cheese.

“Ode on the Mammoth Cheese”
We have seen thee, queen of cheese, Lying quietly at your ease, Gently fanned by evening breeze, Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you’ll go To the great Provincial show, To be admired by many a beau In the city of Toronto.

Cows as numerous as a swarm of bees Or as the leaves upon the trees, It did require to make thee please, And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.

May you not receive a scar as We have heard that Mr. Harris Intends to send you off as far as The great world’s show at Paris.

Of the youth beware of these, For some of them might rudely squeeze And bite your cheek, then songs or glees We could not sing, oh! queen of cheese.

We’rt thou suspended from balloon, You’d cast a shade even at noon, Folks would think it was the moon, About to fall and crush them soon.

At its thickest point, the ice in Antarctica is 15,700 feet thick.

How does a fad start? What makes millions of people all jump on the same bandwagon at the same time? Is it coincidence...or careful planning? Here’s a look at an interesting craze of the late 1990s
.

T
OYCOON

In 1980 Ty Warner left his sales job at a San Francisco stuffed animal company to start one of his own. He named it after himself—Ty Inc. The business did well from the start, but it wasn’t until 1993 that Warner hit on the idea that would put it on the map. Why not make a stuffed animal so affordable that kids could buy it with one week’s worth of allowance?

So he came up with tiny stuffed animals made of polyester plush fabric that could sell for about $5. The critters came with a heart-shaped paper tag that gave the animal’s name, its “birth date,” and a four-line poem describing it. He called them “Beanie Babies.”

The Beanie Babies’ most novel feature was their filling—as the name suggests, they were loosely filled with plastic “beans” that gave them the feel of a beanbag instead of a stuffed animal. They looked slightly deflated, not stuffed, and when Warner showed his tiny slumping cats, dogs, bears, and other animals to people in the toy industry, they thought he was nuts. “Everyone called them roadkill,” Warner told a reporter in 1996. “They didn’t get it. The whole idea was that they looked real because they moved.”

GET ’EM WHILE THEY’RE HOT

To help boost sales, Warner adopted a clever “strategy of scarcity”:

•
He avoided giant retailers and toy store chains in favor of small gift shops and specialty toy stores, and he limited sales to these stores, too. No store was able to buy all the Beanie Baby characters that were available, and those they did get were limited to 36 of each character per month. Collectors came to perceive them as scarce—they had to buy them quickly before they were gone.

•
Instead of manufacturing as many as he could sell, Warner regularly “retired” Beanie Baby characters by posting a notice on the company Web site. Some were retired only after a long run; others were retired quickly. There was no logic to it, so when a new character appeared in stores people had to act fast if they wanted one.

Japan produces more solar power than any country on Earth.

•
Warner made small changes in each character. If the first production run of Shasta the Bear had an orange ribbon around its neck, Warner would then change the ribbon to yellow, and then green on the next runs. Or he might change the color of the bear from white to red, and then to blue. Hardcore collectors felt compelled to buy several versions of each character.

•
But Warner’s most brilliant stroke of all: a near-total information blackout on his company, so that nobody had a complete picture of what was going on. How many Seaweed the Otters was the company going to produce? In how many versions? Which stores would get them? How soon would they be retired? He wouldn’t divulge his plans, which further fueled the frenzy to buy.

FROM BEANS TO NUTS

Warner’s clever marketing paid off. Kids spending their allowance money on Beanie Babies were quickly overtaken by crazed adult collectors racing from store to store looking for newly retired Beanie Babies before they disappeared forever. Since no information was coming, Ty collectors organized phone and e-mail networks to compare notes and keep up to date.

New Beanie Baby characters came out all the time priced at $5 to $7, but as the fad grew, the value of the oldest and rarest of the retired Beanie Babies began to soar on the collectors’ market. Skyrocketing prices drew more people into the craze, which in turn pushed prices even higher. People bought every character they could get their hands on, in the hope that, like the royal blue Peanut the Elephant, one or more of them might one day be worth $5,000.

NOTHING LIKE IT IN THE WORLD

So how crazy did it get? Collectors made daily calls to their local toy stores to see when new shipments were expected, then on delivery day lined up hours before the store opened to be the first to buy whatever new Beanie Babies might be in the shipment. But why wait? Some people drove around looking for UPS trucks that might be carrying Beanie Babies. People fought over stuffed frogs and crabs in the parking lots of strip malls, and in West Virginia a security guard named Harry Simmons was shot and killed by his “business partner” during an argument over their Beanie Babies.

Chicago’s average winter temperature is colder than that of Reykjavik, Iceland.

In 1997 McDonald’s announced that it would include a “Teenie Beanie Baby” prize with each Happy Meal. The giveaway turned into the company’s most successful sales promotion ever: Crazed collectors stampeded the restaurants, buying dozens of Happy Meals at a time, tossing out the food and getting back in line to buy more. The promotion was supposed to last a month, but the company ended up giving away all 100 million Teenie Beanie Babies—one for every child in America—in ten days.

And over the course of the Beanie Baby craze, Ty Warner, a man who basically sells little
bean bags
for a living, pocketed about $6 billion. In 2003
Forbes
magazine listed him as the world’s 44th richest person—in a league with software giants, media moguls, and Arab sheiks.

WHAT GOES UP...

Nothing could postpone the inevitable: With factories in Asia churning out new Beanie Babies by the hundreds of millions, sooner or later people were bound to get bored and even the most diehard collectors would despair of ever collecting them all. By mid-1999 Beanie Babies were beginning to pile up on store shelves, so Warner announced that the company was retiring
all
of its remaining Beanie Babies on December 31. The “last” Beanie Baby ever? A black bear named “The End.” Sales shot up again.

Then on Christmas Eve he announced he would put it to a vote: Beanie Baby fans could phone in (at 50¢ a call) and vote on whether Beanie Babies should be saved. Guess what happened!

The fake retirement boosted sales in the short run, but in the long run it probably killed the craze. The Ty company still manufactures Beanie Babies, but today they’re what they should have been all along: toys for kids. New ones sell for about $6 in toy stores, but on eBay shell-shocked collectors who hoped to pay for their kids’ educations by hoarding Beanie Babies are now dumping them in bulk. Even when offered for a penny apiece, they don’t always attract bidders.

Moral of the story: Beanbags are great toys. They’re just not good investments.

Trinidad’s paradoxical frog starts as a foot-long tadpole and “grows” into an inch-long frog.

Some doctor shows on TV may seem far-fetched, but these stories prove that truth is stranger than fiction
.

Y
IP/TUCK

In Rio de Janeiro, Dr. Edgard Brito is now offering a wide variety of the latest surgical procedures, such as Botox injections and wrinkle-reductions. Brito’s patients, however, happen to be dogs. For a reasonable price, the vet performs full face-lifts including ear straightening and eyebrow corrections. When asked by reporters about his surgical packages, Brito said, “We all like to talk to someone who looks good. It is the same for dogs.”

WORKS EVERY TIME

In April 2002, doctors told Trizka Litton that she was going to need a hernia operation, but that her condition didn’t require immediate surgery. Finally, after seven months on the hospital waiting list, Litton had had enough. She concocted a cocktail of crumbled biscuits and cranberry juice, microwaved it, and called the paramedics, claiming that she had just vomited blood. An ambulance immediately took her to the hospital (where she promptly disposed of the evidence before docs could test it). Doctors performed emergency surgery and discovered that her stomach was pressing dangerously on her heart. Litton later said, “I carried a heavy burden of guilt and shame at being forced to cheat and lie. But it vanished when doctors told me just how near death I had been.”

HAIRY HEARING

In 2002, 24-year-old Yu Zhenhuan was listed in the
Guinness Book of World Records
as the “World’s Hairiest Man” (thick hair covers 96% of his body). But due to the growth of hair inside his ears, Zhenhuan, star of the film
China’s Number One Hairy Child
when he was six, was losing his hearing and suffering from pounding headaches. In order to restore the “hairy child’s” hearing, doctors performed a unique operation: a four-hour “hairectomy,” removing hair follicles two to three centimeters long from his inner ear. Yet despite the apparent dangers of a hairy physique, Zhenhuan refuses to shave any part of his body but his beard.

Cosmic question: If you say, “I always lie,” are you telling the truth?

Everyone’s got a question they’d like answered—basic stuff, like “Why is the sky blue?” Here are a few questions, with answers from the nation’s top trivia experts
.

O
PEN WIDE

Q:
Why are yawns contagious?

A:
“The action of a mouth opening is not what compels others to yawn, according to Dr. William Broughton, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of South Alabama. Studies have demonstrated that showing someone a photo of a wide-open mouth does not induce a yawn. Conversely, holding a hand over the mouth while yawning doesn’t prevent it from being contagious. Contagious yawns appear ‘basically to be a visual response.’ Between 40 and 60% of people who watch videos or hear talk about yawning also end up doing it, too. Researchers from the State University of New York tested people to find out what kind of person is most susceptible to contagious yawning. Their conclusion: people who are self-aware or empathetic are more likely to catch yawns.” (From
The Mobile
(Alabama)
Register
)

X MARKS THE SPOT

Q:
What causes liver spots?

A:
“Liver spots, also called age spots or
lentigenes
, are the result of hyperpigmentation—the buildup of excess pigment in patches of the skin. Liver spots have nothing to do with the liver; they most often result from a lifetime of exposure to sunlight. Other possible causes include surgery, pregnancy, and some medications.” (From
The New York Times Second Book of Science Questions and Answers
, by C. Claiborne Ray)

BAD TASTE

Q:
Why does orange juice taste so bad after you brush your teeth?

A:
“The detergent used in most toothpastes—sodium lauryl sulfate—temporarily modifies the taste system, according to Dr. John DeSimone of Virginia Commonwealth University. It reduces your ability to taste sweetness and saltiness, and makes sour foods intensely bitter. Right after brushing, anything will taste less sweet. Don’t worry, though: the reaction won’t harm you.” (From
Newsweek
)

Minimum wage in 1950: 75¢ an hour.

DRY YOUR EYE

Q:
Why do we have eyebrows?

A:
“We have eyebrows for two reasons. The first is to keep water from running into your eyes. Your forehead can perspire more than other parts of the body. Perspiration is salty, and if you didn’t have eyebrows it would run into your eyes and cause them to smart. If it is raining hard, water running off your head and down your forehead is stopped by the eyebrows so the water doesn’t get into your eyes and hamper your vision. You’ll also notice that the bone under your eyebrows sticks out slightly. If you bump that bone, the eyebrows soften the blow to prevent damage to the bone. It is believed that early humans had much thicker eyebrows to provide more padding.” (From
What Makes Flamingos Pink?
, by Bill McLain)